Vidya Balan likes to live different lives

By HT

From a single mother to a sex symbol, actor Vidya Balan has portrayed a range of characters on the big screen and says acting allows you to live another person’s world. “Acting isn’t about proving oneself. It is about inhibiting another person’s world, one you have not been in before. As
an actor, living another person’s life is exciting,” says Vidya.

The actor was last seen as a plump loud Punjabi woman with an unusual dressing sense in Rajkumar Gupta’s film, Ghanchakkar. Vidya says she always finds a way to connect with her characters. “My character in this film is not someone I could identify with initially, but the point of identification was that she was happy with herself. I might not be happy with myself all the time, but I love people like that,” says Vidya.

Although the film couldn’t do much at the box office, the critics and audiences praised Vidya’s performance. “I feel humbled when people appreciate me. I’m just doing work I believe in,” says the actor, who has played main roles in Kahaani and The Dirty Picture, but was okay being second fiddle in Ghanchakkar. “In the film, Sanju (Emraan Hashmi) was the central character. But I was okay with it as I loved my character,” says Vidya, who is married to UTV’s Siddharth Roy Kapur, but unlike him, doesn’t want to enter production business. “I’m very greedy about being an actor and I always have a producer at home,” she says.

Ask her if her choice of films provide her creative satisfaction, and Vidya says: “After The Dirty Picture, I thought I had done everything that needed to be done. But in Ghanchakkar, I was happy to be cast in this diametrically-opposite character.” The actor will next be seen in Shaadi Ke Side Effects.